“There is neither happiness nor misery in the world. There is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die […] that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.”
— Alexandre Dumas (The Count of Monte Cristo)
Today has been a pretty great day, in all its ordinarity. It just keeps hitting me that I have so much to be thankful for. I am alive, for starters, in no way to be taken for granted. I have a wonderful place to live in a town that I love where I have a lot of friends who I am lucky enough to get to spend much time with. I am in good health, and might well be in better physical shape than ever before. I ran 19 kilometres today (that’s further than ever before), in brisk sunny windy weather, with an uncomplaining body that finally seems to be adapting somewhat to long-distance running. I have spent half the day working at a job that I enjoy, in daytime hours and for reasonable salary. I have written a lot of words today, on a book that I think I might actually manage to tie together in the end. NaNoWriMo is going according to plan, and I am enjoying the unexpected turns the story is taking. I made food and baked a cake and cuddled with two cats. I’ve got some time left before sleep, and I am damned well going to spend it doing things I want to do instead of things I should do. I hardly ever have to be lonely.
So yeah. Even though this year has been extremely rough, I’m getting by. More than that: I fundamentally love my life, which is a very effective way to keep going even when times are hard. I think this really is how I want to live my life, and I am privileged as fuck for getting to have my high ambitions and work towards them. Mostly through luck, probably, but some aspects of my life are actually awesome because I worked hard for them to become that way. So amidst all the angst I tend to exude through this blog, I thought it would be appropriate to just bask in my joy of being alive for a moment.
Egocentric, me? Well, I do engage with the outside world sometimes. But not today. Today belongs to me.
“What was personal gain, but the freedom to do what you wanted to do?”
— Kim Stanley Robinson (Green Mars)
Love and joy,
Winterdragon
